ORDER REMOVING ADMIN TASKS OF TEACHERS STAY, AMID SPECULATIONS ANA MARIE P. SAGUM

Department Order No. 002 orders the immediate removal of administrative tasks from teachers' workloads. Despite speculations that it might cause disruptions in schools, the Department of Education said the order will stay. Officials said it is too early to make speculations and urged everyone to wait for the results. A group earlier expressed concern that the 10,000 administrative personnel that DepEd deployed are not enough compared to the total number of public schools nationwide. However, the DepEd said that under the order, schools can utilize their own funds for maintenance and other operating expenses (MOOE) to hire more non-teaching personnel. While the number of nonteaching personnel is not enough, it is stated in the order’s guidelines that using the MOOE, hiring through contract of service or job order for the administrative tasks is allowed for schools, as well as a representation from the local school boards for additional non-teaching staff. Over the past two years, DepEd was able to allocate more than 10,000 Administrative Assistants, Administrative Officers, and Project Development Officers I. But since it is not enough for the ideal number of one-is-to-one for the 47,000 schools, DepEd said clustered schools can avail of the services of these non-teaching positions while DepEd is still working to provide more staff. The order was issued was because teachers have the tendency to give more attention to their administrative tasks over their teaching tasks, the agency said. Included in the administrative tasks that was taken away from teachers are making of reports, acting as property custodians, financial and records management, feeding, among others.

-oOoThe author is Teacher III at San Juan Elementary School